Squeeze Spotify through the Proxy Tube

One or two years ago I was fortunate enough to register for a Spotify-Account while they could be registered for free from the UK. I grabbed myself a UK based Proxy and registered. Normally the only way to get an Account still is to be invited by existing users as far as I know.

For those who don’t know Spotify: Spotify is a music service connected to a Jukebox by the same name (downloadable for Windows and Mac so far), much like iTunes, the main difference however is that with Spotify the music inside this Jukebox doesn’t primarily come from your hard drive but from Spotify’s servers. So as a layman, just imagine the joy of being able to listen to millions of songs, on demand, for free, whenever you want to listen to them.

Of course this comes with a few downsides. Unless you have a Premium Account, Spotify is Ad-Supported. This includes both Banners inside the application and Sound clips that interrupt your music-experience for a few seconds. I personally still believe this offering is worth all the trouble, which lets me come to a second major downside: Spotify is only usable from a few select European countries so far. Once you log into the application from one of these countries you can use it from anywhere for 14 days, even with a non-Premium Account.

So yesterday after installing Spotify the login-screen told me, as expected, that my country of residence doesn’t match the one in my profile. (Updating the profile as suggested isn’t really an option at this point)

Solution: Part 1

So without going further into detail about the Tor-Project and what it does, I thought this could do the trick. One major difficulty about this, however, was that I didn’t really know a way to “choose” which  identity from the Tor Network I wanted to use. But a little bit of googling around and reading the Tor documentation brought me an answer that would spare me the pain of having to use netcat to connect to the Tor Control Port (9051), having to learn and punch in some commands and so on. (Or even worse: Click “Use new Identity” over and over again and pray to god for the right IP Address)

All you have to do is download a complete Tor Package for your Operating System and follow these steps:

1. Find your torrc file. (If you use Vidalia, it is configured under Settings > Advanced)
2. Open it with the text editor of your choice.
3. In a new line, enter ExitNodes $fingerprint, $fingerprint, … where $fingerprint is the fingerprint of a Node from the Tor Network. These can be found and copied to the clipboard in Vidalia by clicking on “View the Network” and right-clicking on any Node.
4. (Re)Start Tor/Vidalia.

Unless you write StrictNodes 1 into the torrc file (which I don’t recommend) this declaration of Exit Nodes is just a list of preferred Nodes, it is still possible that your Tor Route will have its exit at another Node. Information about all the other possible entries for the torrc can be found in the Tor Manual.

Solution: Part 2

So now that we have found a way to guarantee almost 100% that we are able to surf through an IP in the country of our choice, all that is left is to log in to the Spotify application through this proxy. Tor in combination with Polipo offers us the possibility to surf through an HTTP(S) Proxy on Port 8118 or through a SOCKS Proxy on Port 9050 but of course you can use whichever proxy you prefer. However it doesn’t seem like the login screen of Spotify offers any ability to change the proxy settings (it would be a lot easier to change these settings as soon as we got past the login-screen of course).

But all is not lost. For the lazy ones this is the moment where you disconnect yourself from the internet. (I didn’t try it, but I guess it should work. If not, the lazy ones might as well jump over their dusty shadows for once.) Of course my rather “complicated” solution was to configure my firewall to block Spotify from accessing the internet, only later did I realize that unplugging my network cable for a few seconds could have done the same job. However, this is what you’ll find:

And the holy grail of configurability has been revealed. A click on “proxy settings” will show us what we wanted to see.

If you’ve successfully configured Tor to surf over an IP Adress that matches the country in your Spotify Profile, you should now be able to log into the application. Of course you can then deactivate the use of a proxy in Spotify again for 14 days so you can stream the music at full speed.

Conclusion

The main reason why I wanted to post this to my blog is that I didn’t find any tutorial on the internet that described to me what Part 1 of my solution contains. Going through the Tor Manual taught me this but hopefully I can assist someone else by not having to read through it in its entirety. And of course finding a good use for Tor beside its awesome possibilities of surfing the web anonymously gave this a very neat context.

Ubuntu 10.04: Lucid Lynx

Now that the latest an greatest of current versions of Ubuntu is finally into its beta stage i thought i should give it a try. I heard and read a lot about it.So let’s see what’s true and what isn't.

As you can see the desktop is still familiar but the new “Computer” and “Trash” icon already look a lot more welcoming and are hopefully only a small taste of what’s to come until April 2010.

Many of the Menu-Icons are refreshed as well. What I like especially is the Wine-Icon.

Other than that the first impression doesn’t try to fool you into thinking that everything’s changed. It just seems like a worthy polish of what’s been there already.

 

Numerous services keep crashing on me all the time (and telling me so through an error-message) but I never realize what’s broken. Everything just works like I’d expect it to. The only thing that annoyed me was that the standard search provider of Firefox was now changed to Yahoo which I immediately had to change back to my own preference. Pidgin is once again the IM-client of choice for Canonical, which I welcome. I’ve been told that as of 10.04 the GIMP is no longer part of the standard Ubuntu installation, but since I only did an upgrade I cannot confirm that. If it’s true and there is no replacement for it I could understand that since not everybody needs a powerful photo manipulation software. As far as I know the GIMP binaries are pretty huge which doesn’t go well with an Ubuntu Installation-CD where size is still a factor.

Ubuntu 10.04 also has this nice Social Networking touch integrated into the Taskbar (or whatever the bar on top is called) now.

 

Networks like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr (although not all of them fully functional yet) can be integrated into this new Broadcasting app seen below that allows you to access all of your social networks at once and see what’s happening.

 
Of course there haven’t been any huge promises for 10.04 concerning the look-and-feel so I’m rather pleased with what I’m seeing there, assuming that the improvements don’t stop there. But there have been promises about functionality like faster booting and I didn’t see any improvement there yet. Let’s hope for the best that Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx will become a worthy re-release of one of the best Linux distributions out there.

Windows Server 2008 On-the-fly Memory Expansion

Since I had a Windows Server 2008 x64 Virtual Machine configured in my VMware Workstation and a Product Key from MSDN that I didn’t use I decided to try one of the cool features Server 2008 brings to a wide variety of new and even some old motherboards out there. I’m talking about its “Hot-add-Memory” feature.

So as I start this Virtual Machine up I have it configured with 1024MB (or 1GB) of RAM (click on image for original):

 

And now I want to expand this Server’s RAM without having to restart the whole system. I honestly don’t know if that’s that common of a use case out there in the real world but nevertheless it’s something that’s possible technology-wise and I think Linux has had it far earlier than Windows so here goes:

 

Hot-Swapping RAM is something that’s also included in more expensive versions of Server 2008 (like Datacenter) but in the Enterprise version which we have here all we can do is expand the RAM, not reduce it (see red box). So I pull the slider up to 2048 MB (or 2GB) to double my RAM and click “OK”.

What happened then wasn’t entirely what I was hoping for. VMware Workstation saved the Virtual Machine’s state first, then the Screen went black for a second and then it came back immediately and everything was exactly as I left it, so I guess this was just a precaution of VMware rather than something that was absolutely necessary. Then it took another few seconds for Windows to recognize the additional RAM and this was what I ended up with:

As you can tell from the red boxes in the first and the last picture (and the immense drop of the blue curve in the last picture) the RAM has been added without any shutdown of the system.

For Companies who need this, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise is definitely not too expensive to buy although it could be cheaper of course. This feature is not exclusive to the latest and greatest hardware either so the additional cost in hardware shouldn’t be too high either. Contrary to a Linux Server it offers an Administrator the possibility of deploying Microsoft Exchange Services natively and it enables them to install the wide variety of Software that’s out there for Windows.

My Desktops

Just something i’ve been wanting to share for some time now.

First up, Windows on a Core i7 with 6GB of RAM:

Next comes my beloved portable, an Aluminum MacBook:

And last a Sony VAIO TX i own since 2005 (Solo Core, 1 GB RAM):

Not included here is my Windows Server 2003. If i find any other computers laying around my house I might just refresh this article.

It's called freedom and you can't have it. Period.

After some stressful times with my 2nd term project at university, some time of doing nothing and a one-week holiday in croatia inbetween I have now started working for the Siemens VAI, which I will be doing for the next 4 weeks.

I wasn't really expecting it but now retrospective (i looked that word up) it still seems quite inevitable that every time I start a short-term job at this place nobody really knows what to do with me. Of course I also know for a fact that I'm not the only person to have this happen to them.
This time was still different though. The guy who is supposed to handle my workflow isn't even around right now (he's in China and afterwards will go straight to Russia and is not expected to come back until October) which is already funny enough to begin with.

However his colleague, who is a really nice guy (so far i've made out his name to be Gi Shen, I will of course try to get into detail about the spelling), tried to fill this hole by trying to find a Laptop and my User Account Information for me which then let him find out that his colleague (the guy who is in China) was by far not the only important person who was currently abroad.
Still they had some crappy HP Notebook laying around which I am currently writing this Post on.

What this led me to was finding out once again that the Siemens VAI restrictions on how employees are allowed to use both the Internet and their Computer itself are practically designed to not let you think or do anything out of the box. Of course I come from an IT playground where it would be unthinkable to not be able to do some command line testing or any weird stuff that doesn't really do anything but give you valuable information at times. Certainly I wouldn't want to break anything. But here I sit with a basic access only to internet sites which are absolutely positive about not containing any information that could break these rules.

Basically Siemens VAI employees can say: "We have Internet, but not the real one y'know."
There is one upside to this though: The guy who is in China right now has his own office which I can now sit in all by myself.

In my eyes nothing has changed about the Siemens VAI except that the guidelines and restrictions may have become even tighter overall. Of course after my first day I still didn't get anything to do, so as soon as that changes it hopefully won't seem all that bad. After all I'm not here to watch YouTube videos or go to Facebook (I guess).

Maybe I'll keep you updated about how my job goes on although I would much prefer posting some things about Personal- or Mobile Computing. Don't have any ideas yet.

see you

Time Machine and Apple Multi-Touchpads

Without finding nor providing an excuse for my absence around here I think I have gathered enough things to talk about to fill a blog entry once again after some weeks of hard work on multiple school projects.

Yesterday I came to the realization that I don’t even have to buy any additional hardware in order to be able to use the Time Machine feature of my MacBook. Since I bought my Network Attached Storage I had a 500GB USB Storage laying around with nothing to do. At first I tried to modify Time Machine in order to be able to use it as a Network Storage although it isn’t a Time Capsule from Apple. After a variety of weird Error Messages (which seem to be one of the reasons why Apple only supports their own Time Capsules) I decided to connect it via USB.

It works like a charm. Time Machine backs up to this Storage hourly whenever it is connected while the MacBook is not on battery operation. It keeps those hourly backups for the last 24 hours and lowers them to daily updates for the last 7 days accordingly. Furthermore it keeps weekly updates of my files until there is no storage left. So to retrieve a lost file or file-state one opens a Finder (=Explorer) Window and directs it to where you once had your file the way you want it to have now. You launch Time Machine and it takes the Finder Window on a journey to the past. You specify the Date you want to go back to and the contents of the Window will change to what they have been like at that time.

So whenever my MacBook is connected to the Storage those backups will be made regularly and I can make those journeys to the past.

To switch to another topic, something I wanted to talk about in my Blog for a long time now is how satisfied I am with the way the new Multi-Touch Trackpads from Apple work.

Since the introduction of the Multi-Touch concept by Apple with the iPhone this has proven to be a hit among customers looking for ways to interact with their hardware more intuitively. And it has proven my conviction wrong that touch-pads cannot be a tool for a serious workflow on a mobile computer.

With this Trackpad I do not feel the need of grabbing a hold of my Mouse on every occasion.

I do not feel hindered by technology when working with it. It has size and it doesn’t recognize the accidental touch as a click like many others do and it does not have a dedicated Click-Button since it itself is the button which you can press down on which I think is way more intuitive than having your own click-button when most people just want to click on the touchpad itself anyways.

Whenever someone uses it for the first time they stumble across the problem that clicking and holding down on the Trackpad while dragging a scrollbar across the screen can be rather annoying. What they do not know of course is that its primary intent isn’t that at all. Since it can receive multiple inputs you can for example right-click when clicking with two fingers or scroll while sliding across with two fingers. In supported applications the possibilities are even higher in number. You can pinch and zoom in iPhoto. You can use a 4-finger swipe to get to your desktop or to Exposé (a grid of all open windows). You can use 3 fingers to go through an iPhoto Album.

Of course every application can implement their own functionalities for these, which means that sooner or later there will be even more advantages for users of this Trackpad since they are now being built into every mobile Mac Apple ships.

So this entry has been very Apple-based but this should just go to show that although I believe to be very critical of what companies like Apple do these days (because I absolutely don’t think their philosophy is better than anyone else’s) I can’t help being astonished by their way of thinking once in a while.

Have a nice weekend

Apple User Accounts, iPhone Development

So for my day off after yesterday’s “C# for Windows Mobile” exam I decided to join some colleagues of a higher semester as they start a brand-new course - which has its premiere here at University of Applied Sciences Hagenberg right now and maybe among all Univeristies of Austria - concerning iPhone Development.

When I entered the laboratory in which the entire course will be held, I encountered some new hardware which was acquired by the University some time in February already and obviously has found its primary use now. During the lecture I realised that all the students who are signed for the course could log in to the Mac Minis with their Active Directory Accounts the University provides them. As we all either know or can find out from the Link, Active Directory is a service by Microsoft that enables you to store user accounts including their files on a Windows Server so the respective users can log in from any computer and use them alike.

Prior to my research on the internet I did not know that Active Directory and Open Directory (from Apple) can interact with eachother at all. I was scared that some Administrator actually created those accounts one by one including their passwords, which would mean that I am not the only one who has legal access to my password (assuming that the Administrators of a System I use can do whatever they want with my data). My Research however showed at least some calming results. Active and Open Directory can be used in combination but there have to be both a Windows Server and a Mac OS X Server running on the network. It does seem to be very complicated to accomplish the wanted results though. What I also know is that others at University have already used Macintosh Computers for video cutting or other creativity related things, so it only seems logical that they have been using the possibility to log into their accounts from both Operating Systems all along.

When I tried it out myself the login went smoothly as you’d expect it. I still hope that no one has access to my password in plain-text but in the end I also know that I can be the only one held responsible for my own security, so how far I want to go with my paranoia defines how vulnerable my digital personality is.

And of course the conclusion of all this is that everyone who uses Computers without exception has to be aware of this.

have a nice weekend

Festplatten, Windows und ihre Unverträglichkeit

Nachdem ich diesen Blog jetzt eine Zeit lang außen vorgelassen habe, habe ich mir gedacht es wäre wieder mal Zeit für einen Eintrag. Und als ob das nicht genug wäre habe ich mir auch gleich eingebildet wieder einmal einen deutschen Eintrag zu verfassen.

In gewisser Weise als Herausforderung an mich selbst, um zu sehen wie sehr ich der deutschen Grammatik und Rechtschreibung noch mächtig bin. Andere in der Hinsicht zu kritisieren beherrsche ich nach wie vor sehr gut.

Die Thematik würde zwar in gewisser Weise zu Mobile Computing passen, aber nichts desto trotz auf Deutsch: Ich hasse die Art und Weise wie Windows Server 2003 (oder Windows NT generell) mit Datenträgern umgeht.

Und das sage ich nun bereits fast eine Woche nachdem ich feststellen musste, dass mein Windows Server 2003 eine halbvolle 500 GB Festplatte datentechnisch gesehen beinahe unbrauchbar gemacht hat und ich mir bereits eine neue Festplatte in Form einer 1TB Buffalo LinkStation zugelegt habe, welche auf Linux läuft, und ich bereits alle wichtigen Daten in Sicherheit gebracht habe vor diesem Monster, welches wir ahnungslos mit dem Namen “Windows” verharmlosen. Dies soll quasi demonstrieren mit welch unmessbar grenzenloser (sowohl unmessbar als auch grenzenlos) Wut ich bereits genannter Feststellung vor knapp einer Woche entgegengetreten bin. Ich habe aus gutem Grund mit einem Blog-Eintrag darüber auf mich warten lassen.

Besagtes Betriebssystem hat die Angewohnheit Daten nicht so auf die Festplatte zu schreiben wie sie dann auch reproduzierbar bleiben. Ich weiß allerdings nicht ob das bereits beim Abspeichern passiert oder erst später. Natürlich ist es außerdem möglich, dass das rein an der Festplatte liegt, welche ich nutze (eine Maxtor OneTouch 500 GB). Nichts desto trotz ist dies in meinen Augen inakzeptabel. Gerade ein Server-Betriebssystem muss die Erwartung erfüllen können Datensicherheit zu garantieren. Mehr als jeder andere Typ Betriebssystem.

Ich habe vor dieser 500GB Festplatte bereits eine 300 GB Maxtor Netzwerkfestplatte (so wie es die Buffalo LinkStation ist, sprich eine Festplatte mit eigenem Betriebssystem) besessen die ich nun schon etwa 4 Jahre benutze und seit Monaten im Dauerbetrieb. Diese läuft ebenfalls auf Linux und hat mich noch nie der Möglichkeit beraubt auf Daten zuzugreifen, welche ich irgendwann zuvor dort abgespeichert habe.

Das Fazit aus dieser Erfahrung soll sein, dass es für mich persönlich zwar noch immer absolut nicht in Frage kommt Linux als Applikations-Server zu verwenden, weil ich mich dazu einfach nicht gut genug unter Linux zurechtfinde, allerdings werde ich die Sicherheit meiner Daten von nun an nie wieder einem nicht UNIX-basierten Betriebssystem überlassen und ich würde keinem, der diesen Eintrag liest etwas anderes ans Herz legen.

jetzt bleibt mir nur noch allen einen schönen Start in die Woche zu wünschen…

My Mac OS X Dock reviewed

So after a weekend break and a stressful start into a new one I could finally think of a topic for another blog-entry. So here’s a list of Programs that reside in the Dock of my MacBook and some more i regularly depend on:

• Finder – Who would’ve thought.
• Firefox – It’s my browser of choice and a good one at that. I know my way around Internet Explorer/Safari and they both do not meet my expectations and the only other one worth mentioning in my eyes is Opera which i have also tried numerous times but it just doesn’t offer the same allaround solution.
• Mail – With the ability to work with multiple Mail Accounts (IMAP of my university and Gmail in this case) intuitively it already provides everything I’m used to from Windows. Smart Folders, RSS functionality and Notes are just very useful additions to that.
• iCal – After trying unsuccessfully to sync my Outlook-World (which is synced with my Mobile Phone) with the Apple-side of the pond i decided to just sync my Phone redundantly over Bluetooth with iSync as well until Nokia Ovi for Mac comes along. So I’m not satisfied by its syncability but very much by its usability.
• iTunes – Another very guessable Application I use. The only alternative i tried so far is Songbird and although i liked it i didn’t see any reason to not stick with iTunes since I don’t listen to music on my MacBook too much anyway.
• SimplifyMedia – So this is where my list might become interesting for some. For those who don’t know it. SimplifyMedia provides me with the ability to stream music from any of my computers that also have SimflifyMedia running on it. It integrates into iTunes (or Winamp for Windows) very neatly. Very recommendable application.
• Picasa – Although it hasn’t been out for Macs for long yet I sure made up for lost time already. It’s the best Picture Manager I know of and none works better when you have your Collections in a network-folder.
• Adium – Without a doubt the most advanced Instant Messaging client out there for Mac OS X. It’s got it all. It’s that simple.
• Cyberduck – When it comes to foreign file-protocols like FTP, WebDAV and so on, I’ve always been satisfied with the way the Finder itself handles them but I still hold this app dear for its ease of use, should I ever need it.
• Activity Monitor – Since I often want to know what’s happening inside my computer i could not live without some Application of this kind. Although it cannot even begin to keep up with Process Explorer for Windows it still features everything I need.

Other Applications I regularly use:

• VMware Fusion – This Application sure has made it easier for me to use Windows on my MacBook from time to time. It’s so much simpler to be able to have Mac OS X and Windows running side by side when the performance penalty is almost not present at all.
• InsomniaX – Sitting in the MenuBar this Application makes sure my MacBook doesn’t go to sleep when I close the lid of my MacBook. I don’t like that standard behavior.

Maybe some of you can profit from this blog-entry. The others might as well just wait for another one. I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

cheers

My first Windows Mobile Project

So i just finished writing my first very basic Application for the Windows Mobile Platform.

It's basically a Calculator which supports the 4 Standard Operations and has a few additional features:

1. You have a history of your previous calculations included. (Screenshot 2)

2. You can choose any of your previous calculations and press the button "Ans" in order to include the result of that calculation in your next one. (Screenshot 2)

3. When you start typing into one of the Boxes or change the Operation type (Screenshot 1) the Application waits a certain amount of time before using your inputs for a new calculation. So you always have enough time to enter your desired values before the calculation fires.

4. And although not a feature I still included a Screenshot (3) of the "About" page with a working link to my Homepage which starts the Internet Explorer bundled with Windows Mobile.

Now I'm only looking forward to the Implementation-Phase of my own Project for this Semester which I will tell you about sometime in the future.

Lock your Mac tight

Just a quick update on something I found for my precious Aluminum MacBook in order to get a beloved Windows function over to my Mac.

LockTight is a Preference Pane for Mac OS X that enables you to press a specific Key-Combination in order to lock your Mac so it can only be reactivated with your password.
Previously to that I have been using "Fast User Switching" to get to the Login-Window quickly but there were 2 major problems to that.

1. Network Connections are interrupted. So no Background Downloading while you're away.
2. iTunes Music stops playing.

With LockTight I have worked that out and I like its behavior very much since the Screen doesn't just go black but starts displaying the screensaver of your choice.

regards

Windows vs. Mac OS X: Aspects reviewed

Tiny Spoiler: no Macintosh/Apple praising found in this post.

So to make my blog interesting to a bigger audience I decided to publish both in german (because I think one should never forget where they came from, especially if you're partially surrounded by all those programmers who write great programs in bad english and think that's OK) and english of course.

The language i choose will most likely be based on the subjects i cover. Whether they are of interest for everyone or rather just the people from my language area (which is Austria and not Germany for all those who didn't know).

What i want to talk about are the following experiences i had with the operating systems Windows from Microsoft and Mac OS X from Apple in specific scenarios.

My School (University of Applied Sciences Hagenberg) offers me the possibility to access my personal files on their server from everywhere where i have internet - through a WebDAV protocol. Which is great by the way.

Anyways, here are two short overviews of how the previously mentioned operating systems handle all the fuzz:

Mac OS X 10.5.6: When I connect it asks me for my credentials and everything seems to be working smoothly. But after moving some files back and forth you realize that OSX tends to for example say it overwrites a folder but in fact it just uses a different set of characters to name the folders and files so then you might have 2 Folders with almost the same Name existing side by side (i.e. Übung01 and Ubung01), but OSX will still only show you the one you just copied over. Furthermore what seems really cool is that no matter how bad your WiFi connection might be at the moment, OSX seems to be browsing through the folder structure smoothly at any time. Which is until you find out that OSX just buffers the contents of the folders you've already been to and what you see can very likely just be an outdated view of the actual data, someone else might have edited.

Windows XP: So Windows has the possibility to access FTP/WebDAV/... from within the Explorer as well which I didn't find out until recently. Just like OSX it asks me for my credentials at first login which i then choose to save for further logins. First of all, with Windows you can access the server over its own file protocol (called Samba in the UNIX world) if you're in its local network (so in this case when I'm at school). The hierarchically highest link you would be able to access is \\fshome\students and then you have to go through all the subfolders until you eventually find your own files. But the problem is that you may not dare to access \\fshome for example. Because if you do you're on your way to eternal damnation. You don't have the rights to access it but contrary to other Samba servers you wont get the opportunity to correct your mistake through a simple altert-window. You'll just find out that this explorer.exe is lost forever. (Apparently this doesn't happen on all Windows machines but my point stands.) On the upside of things, Windows doesn't seem as smooth as OSX while browsing through the folder structure, which assures me that whatever Windows shows me is up-to-date content

So why can't I work with my files on every type of computer the same way? Using anything else than Explorer/Finder is not an option because I want it to work with the same File Browser I use for everything else on said operating system.

So maybe I've just been a Windows user for a too long period of time and just don't know my way around UNIX systems and if anyone would try to point that out i will not hesitate to agree with them but what do you think: Would you rather have an operating system that claims to work in every scenario but doesn't, or an operating system which obviously doesn't work in every scenario but seems to be doing the job well if you know how to work with it?

Homepage von Martin Kuttner

Wieder einmal ist es so weit: Dem Autor wurde seine Homepage zu langweilig und hat imzugedessen aus seiner gestrigen Langeweile heraus eine neue erstellt, welche unter demselben Link erreichbar sein wird wie die alte: Homepage von Martin Kuttner

Aber das ist bei weitem noch nicht alles, was dem Autor in letzter Zeit widerfahren ist. Er hat auch eine sehr nette Person kennengelernt, mit welcher er nun seit Freitag (10.02.2006) eine werdende Beziehung so lang als möglich teilen möchte.

Die Rarität seiner Blog-Einträge sind keineswegs auf irgendwelche Drogenratien oder Ähnliches zurückzuführen sondern schlichtweg auf seine Faulheit, welche sich nun in seinen wohlverdienten Semesterferien wahrscheinlich wie das Universum in die Unendlichkeit ausdehnen wird (aber das hoffen wir alle nicht).

Letztendlich sollte noch gesagt werden, dass in nächster Zeit noch einige Änderungen an der Homepage vorgenommen werden und daher der tägliche Blick auf diese bestimmt ausnahmslos in grenzenloser Glückseligkeit resultieren wird.

mfg

JustBlogIt!

Habe vor kurzem die Firefox Erweiterung "JustBlogIt!" entdeckt und da ich ohnehin schon lange genug nicht mehr hier reingeschrieben habe dachte ich mir, es wäre mal wieder an der Zeit.

Habe heute auf der FM4 Homepage einen Post gelesen in dem sich jemand über dieses plötzliche wiedererscheinen von unserem (ehemaligen) Anime Fußballhelden Tsubasa Ozora geäußert hat.
Anfangs dachte ich die Welt würde nicht mehr lange stehen doch als ich den Post fertig gelesen hatte war ich sehr positiv philosophisch angehaucht.
Der Anhaltspunkt war der, dass jeder Mensch im Leben Ziele hat, manche gibt er auf und manche nicht. Tsubasa hat sein Ziel, ein Weltbekannter Fußballer zu werden, erreicht.
Und abschließend erwähnte der Autor noch ein paar Sprüche bekannter Personen die zum Thema passten und einer davon gefiel mir besonders:
"Wer seine Ziele nicht an den Sternen festmacht, kommt nicht mal auf den Kirchturm."
(Patrick Swayze)
Mir war dieser Spruch in der Form "Verlange das Unmögliche um das Mögliche zu erreichen" bereits bekannt und solche Dinge berühren mich immer wieder.

Vielleicht wollen ja manche wissen, was ich seit Jahresanfang so getrieben habe, da ja schriftlich absolut garnichts darüber aufliegt. Eigentlich war nichts besonderes an der Tagesordnung, allerdings macht mich in letzter Zeit der Schulstress sehr zu schaffen obwohl die Schularbeitenzeit erst dieses Wochenende richtig losgeht.
Ansonsten habe ich sehr viel Zeit in meine Homepage investiert, was in einer selbstgemachten Shoutbox und einem selbstgemachten Webcounter resultierte.

In diesem Unsinne
Eine schöne Woche euch allen

Neues Spiel...Neues Glück

So um nun auch in meinem Blog das Jahr 2005 endgültig abzuhacken habe ich mir gedacht, eine kleine Zusammenfassung zu machen, über das Geschehene.

Wenn ich so auf das vergangene Jahr zurückblicke so war es bis zu den Sommerferien grob gesehen eigentlich nicht aufregender als schon viele Jahre davor, denn den Schulstress zum Schuljahresende hin hatte ich eigentlich noch jedes Jahr seitdem ich mich einen Gymnasiasten nennen darf und ansonsten war anscheinend nicht viel aufregendes am Tagesplan sonst würde ich mich wohl noch errinnern.

In den Sommerferien kam die ganze Sache dann wieder etwas ins Rollen. Obwohl ich eigentlich zu Hause bleiben wollte dachte ich, dass es womöglich der letzte große Urlaub sein könnte, den ich mit meiner Familie verbringe, sodass ich mit ihnen in die Türkei geflogen bin. Dort lernte ich über eine alte Bekannte eine junge Dame namens Carina kennen, mit der ich daraufhin für 2 Monate eine Beziehung teilen durfte.

Als der Schulalltag dann wieder inmitten von allem stand ging eigentlich alles schonwieder wie gewohnt. Allerdings habe ich 2 Bekanntschaften meiner Wenigkeit im Laufe der Schulzeit sehr verstärken können und zwar diese mit einer gewissen Katrin und einer gewissen Janina. Den Kontakt mit der Katrin verlor ich damals im Verlauf der Sommerferien bis er irgendwann ganz weg war. Janina und ich waren eigentlich immer nur zwei Menschen denen die Existenz des jeweils anderen bewusst war und mehr nicht. Wir kannten uns nur über eine Person namens Nadine aber das sollte sich auch bald ändern. Sowohl Janina als auch Katrin sind zu 2 der wichtigsten Personen in meinem Leben geworden, und das in doch relativ kurzer Zeit.

Was auch noch erwähnenswert wäre, ist mein neuer Laptop. Ich habe mir kurz vor Weihnachten wie bereits in diesem Blog erwähnt einen Sony Vaio TX 1 HP/W zugelegt auf dem ich übrigens gerade diesen Text schreibe. Er ist momentan wahrscheinlich das wichtigste aber ganz sicher das modernste Arbeitsgerät, das ich besitze und ich bin verdammt stolz auf ihn.

Also finde ich, dass das Jahr 2005 zumindest nicht mehr negative Ereignisse mit sich brachte als positive und somit sind wir am Ende eines der wohl bisher längsten Einträge in diesem Blog angelangt.

Rebecca und Olav Sonny

A.S.:
Ohne jetzt erst mal lange um den heißen Brei herumzureden komme ich auch gleich zum Titel dieses Eintrags wenn ihr gestattet.

Die liebe Katrin und ich kamen gestern auf die Idee unsere Notebooks (Acer und Sony Vaio) einander zu versprechen - sprich sie heiraten zu lassen sobald Katrins Acer wieder aus der Reha zurück ist - und dazu mussten wir ihnen natürlich auch Namen geben bzw. wir haben ihnen Namen gegeben und sie folglich heiraten lassen.
Jedenfalls war meine usrsprüngliche Idee meinem neuen Laptop einen Namen zu geben weil mich noch nie ein elektronisches Gerät, das ich mir zugelegt habe so fasziniert hat. Also überlege ich so und verrückt wie ich bin lese ich da das VAIO Logo unter meinem LCD vom Laptop Rückwärts. --- OIAV
"Olav" ist davon meiner Meinung nach nicht mehr weit entfernt und schon hatte ich einen Namen für meinen Laptop.
Als nächstes erzählte ich das Katrin und nach kurzer Diskussion über das Geschlecht ihres Laptops entschied ich mich vorerst für die weibliche Variante und wandte dieselbe Technik an, wie bei meinem Vaio.
ACER rückwärts gelesen ergibt nun mal RECA und was kann man daraus noch alles machen? Also für mich kam nur Rebecca in Frage und schon hatten wir zwei heiratsfähige Wunder der Technik.
Ein Nachname fehlte dann noch. Nachdem ich über den Namen nicht näher informiert bin und weiß, dass "Sony" von dem lateinischen "sonis" (= Klang) und dem englischen "sonny" (= fröhlicher Junge) kommt nahm ich einfach "Sonny". Interessanter Nachname finde ich.

S.:
Das Christkind war dieses Jahr wieder sehr gütig mit mir obwohl ich mir meinen größten Wunsch ja schon davor erfüllen konnte als sich eine Preiswerte Gelegeheit ergab (Sony Vaio TX 1 HP/W).
Ein wenig Skaten konnte ich gestern auch noch bevor wir zu meinen Verwandten fuhren mit meinen neuen Schuhen. Dort angekommen durfte ich die neue Playstation von meinem kleinen Cousin aufbauen, bei meiner Tante helfen, das Dolby Surround System zum Gehen zu bringen, was wir eh nicht schafften und das GPS System meines Onkels dazu zu bringen, das zu tun wozu es gemacht wurde. Selbiges liegt nun bei mir zu Hause und bis dato scheint eigentlich alles einwandfrei zu funktionieren.
Weiters machte ich heute eine tolle Erfahrung mit meinem Olav. Von sieben Uhr abends bis um 2 in der Nacht lief das gute Ding auf Akku inklusive aktivierte WLAN Elektronik und bei 7% Restakku angelangt wurden noch 27 Minuten Restlaufzeit angezeigt.

nun denn wünsche ich allen weiterhin schöne Ferien, ich werde mich wahrscheinlich heute noch für eine Zeit zu meinem Cousin vertschüssen, aber keine Angst, Internet gibt es auch im Josefstal.

Die Eingebungslosigkeit ist des Planlosen Untergang.

Nachdem ich gestern minutenlang vor einem leeren Eingabefeld für einen neuen Post in meinem Blog gesessen bin, wartend auf eine Eingebung, werde ich heute einfach das schreiben, was mir am ehesten eines Blogs würdig erscheint.

Wie manche von euch vielleicht schon gemerkt haben habe ich mir ein Forum eingerichtet unter dem Synonym "BORG Restroom" welches unter folgendem Link erreichbar ist: http://forum.web480.servana.de
Dieses steht nun vorwiegend unter der Leitung meines Freundes Michael und meiner und wir haben auch schon einige User bzw Moderatoren im Bekanntenkreis anwerben können und wir laden jeden herzlichst ein unser Forum um einen User und hoffentlich viele Einträge reicher zu machen.

Des weiteren habe ich noch einen extrem genitalen Link für euch den ich jedem nur empfehlen kann: jax0r.at.gg
Der Humorismus und gewaltverherrlichende Alkoholismus und alles weitere in Person. Einfach zum schreien komisch.

Soweit so schlecht (Schwindt Style)

Und Jesus sprach es werde licht.

Nun nach 2 Tagen "Testlauf" verhänge ich es sozusagen hier nun offiziell, dass meine neue Homepage (Link siehe rechts) endlich fertig ist und ich nur mehr gespannt bin auf haufenweise Kritik und hoffentlich auch Lob eurerseits. Diese könnt ihr vorwiegend in der Shoutbox vor Ort loswerden. Wer diese Seite ohnehin über meine Homepage betrachtet soll einfach fleißig weitersurfen.

Vielen Dank auch im Voraus

Warum ist "Einsilbig" dreisilbig?

Dieser Spruch ist mir auf der heurigen Welser Messe zu Ohren gekommen auf welcher ich meinen Cousin bei seinem Metalltechnik Stand besucht habe. Die Messe an sich war recht lustig als auch informativ aber vor allem lustig angesichts der Tatsache, dass ich ja mit meinem Cousin dort war.

Ansonsten ist nicht viel los gewesen in den letzten Wochen, außer ständig Schule.
Ich möchte an dieser Stelle noch ein wenig "Werbung" für das neue OpenOffice2 machen, welches seit kurzem durch etliche HTTP- und FTP-Server geistert und natürlich vollkommen gratis und eine tolle Alternative zu Microsoft Office bzw StarOffice ist. Ich selbst hatte noch nicht das Vergnügen, aber auch das wird sich bald ändern.

In diesem Unsinne wünsche ich allen noch ein schönes restliches Wochenende und einen nicht minder schönen Start in die neue Woche die für Leute wie mich mit Herbstferien in Aussicht eine sehr kurze sein wird.

Verkünde die Frohbotschaft

Um denen, die sich hier bereits umgesehen haben zu bestätigen, dass ich noch nicht das Zeitliche gesegnet habe, werde ich hier nun doch wieder einmal etwas posten.

Nach 2 Doppelstunden PHP-Unterricht ist daraus resultierend nun mein erstes Projekt entstanden: SkatePics ( alte Version unter HTML zum Vergleich )

Hiermit schicke ich nun alle in die neue Woche auf, dass es eine nicht minder aufregende wird als wir es von ihr erwarten.

(Kommentare zum PHP Projekt erwünscht)